In an earlier blog post, the idea of managing both quantity and quality of risk was introduced.
But what exactly is Risk Quality?
At the most simple level, risk quality can be indicated as the rate of risk per unit of activity.
Risk Quantity = Business Activity Level x Risk Quality
So the suggestion is that a risk management system should pay close attention to that rate of risk as well as the Quantity of risk. See Riskviews Post on risk quality for further discussion.
But the risk manager must notice that the risk quantity is not a single measure. Risk has many facets. If you concentrate on Quality as one number you will get something very different from what you expect.
For further discussion of this see The Law of Risk and Light
Comments
With respect, we can have effective risk discourse but not risk quality. What do you mean by Risk/Unit of Activity - risk activity by sales transaction-volume/company-industry/week-month-year-cycle/country-region-global? What about co-existing cycles that are constantly aggravating and neutralizing each other as well as co-existing with many non-cyclical forces, can you measure it?
a) is best to separate objective measure based upon empirical observations, and subjective analyses that employ speculation assumptions from the model,
b) to be mindful of ephemeral risk since over-confidence/consensus truth are the most dangerous even though our intellectual capacity for complex rational thought has made us theoretically smart, and
c) too narrow a focus misses the equally important meta-risks, those that pass beyond market risks.